Religion and Life Cycles in Early Modern England

Caroline Bowden is Senior Research Fellow in History at Queen Mary University of LondonEmily Vine is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of BirminghamTessa Whitehouse is Senior Lecturer in English at Queen Mary University of London

The volume as a whole is accessible and refreshingly free of jargon and superfluous theoretical baggage. It is well designed, with some excellent illustrations. It deserves to be widely read and consulted.The Journal of the Social History Society

• Introduction: religion and life cycles in early modern England – Caroline Bowden, Emily Vine and Tessa Whitehouse Part I: Birth, childhood and youth1 Second birth and the spiritual lifecycle in Protestant England – Alexandra Walsham 2 Prayer, pregnancy and print – Rebecca Whiteley 3 Maternal breastfeeding: providence and advocacy in seventeenth-century sermons and prescriptive literature – Lauren Cantos4 Religious practice and the social worlds of eighteenth-century children, 1688 to 1800 – Mary Clare Martin5 Intergenerational relationships in a family archive: adolescence, school and French polish – Caroline Bowden Part II: Adulthood and everyday life6 The secular dynamics of religious identity – Bernard Capp7 The clergy and marriage in Restoration comedies – David Fletcher8 Women, religion and early-modern life cycles – Elaine Hobby9 Everyday religious and life-cycle events in the diaries of Richard Stonley – Zoe Hudson10 Letter-writing, life-cycle events and the daily life of faith – Tessa WhitehousePart III: The dying and the dead11 Birth, death and faith: Sir Thomas Aston at the deathbed of his wife – Rosemary Keep12 Caring for the dying and the dead in the London Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities, 1656?1800 – Emily Vine13 Temporality and the eternal afterlife in children’s hymns of the long eighteenth century – Nancy Jiwon ChoIndex